Janice Pariat is the award-winning author of Boats on Land: A collection of Short Stories, Seahorse, and the international best-seller The Nine-Chambered Heart. Her new novel Everything the Light Touches is out with Borough Press, HarperCollins UK. She lives in India. Here she discusses travel fiction:
“What is travel fiction?” a friend asked.
Continue reading What is Travel Fiction? by Janice PariatIn this extract from The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World, James Crawford goes in search of the Grafferner glacier in the Italian-Austrian Alps. Straddling the border between the two nations, when this glacier moves, the border moves too. It is what is known in Italian as a confine mobile – constituted in law by Italy and Austria as a ‘moving border’. A border defined and shaped by gravity, and now melting at an alarming rate due to the impacts of climate change…
The latest addition to our map department are these seven new AmazingWorld children’s A2 wall maps.
These lovingly crafted maps introduce little ones to the many wonders awaiting them around the world. Spark up conversations and fuel their curiosity to guide them as they discover more about the animals, foods, people, places, cultures, and plants across the globe.
Build their knowledge and develop an understanding of the similarities and differences that connect them to people & places around the world.
London Clay is an exploration of the stories that make a city. Written in rich and vivid prose, Tom Chivers leads us on a journey to find the source of his memories, and to discover lost rivers, secret woodlands, the marshes and islands long buried beneath the city he loves.
Here, Tom explains the importance of mapping in his work:
Continue reading London Clay: Journeys in the Deep CityLondon is a city justly proud of its cultural diversity, yet for too long tourists and Londoners alike have had to rely on guides focusing on its white history and landmarks. Now Black London allows us to see this familiar city anew, gathering together the places that tell the story of its Black inhabitants, stretching back to Tudor times.
From Cleopatra’s Needle sitting on the Victoria Embankment, carved in Egypt three and a half thousand years ago, to the Black Lives Matters mural in Woolwich, the city is rich with features that symbolise its Black history.
Here are places worth visiting and revisiting. Get your bearings, revise your history, and be inspired by the work of some remarkable individuals who made London a truly global, modern city.
As well as historical information and recommendations on where to go, there are lots of Black events in London throughout the year. Here are some dates for you to add to diary from Black London by Avril Nanton & Jody Burton:
Continue reading Black London: London’s Black EventsAre you the kind of person who can’t walk past a plaque or a monument without reading every single word? Here, Steve Silk, the author of The Great North Road, talks us through his five favourites along the 400 miles between London and Edinburgh.
As a crucial route linking London to Edinburgh, the Great North Road has been Britain’s backbone for centuries. Kings, queens, soldiers, rebels, mail coaches and highwaymen used the road to get from A to B. One hundred years later journalist Steve Silk went on pilgrimage by bike to explore its history. At a slower pace it’s easier to notice key markers and signs of the past that surround us…
Continue reading Monuments and Markers along the Great North RoadWaypoints: a Journey on Foot is the story of a 1,000 mile walk in Ghana, Togo and Benin, West Africa. I’d been unhappy in my life before I left, and, aged 27, I believed a long walk could help me. The book explores the psychology and folklore of escape, and the ways a long walk can be a healing experience.
Before the journey, I was inspired by many books about walking, solitude, and escape. In this blog I look at four journeys explored in Waypoints that taught me something about the power of walking.
Continue reading Waypoints: a Journey on Foot by Robert MartineauAND THE ANSWER IS……
by Janice Booth
It’s a Pub Quiz-setter’s dream. Which Middle-Eastern island’s endemic buzzard flew into the Guinness Book of Records in 2010? Which Arabian island did Britain try to buy for 10,000 dollars in 1834? Which island is sometimes known as the ‘Galapagos of the Indian Ocean’? Where can you play a traditional game named Algashal that resembles fivestones or jacks? Answers: Socotra, Socotra, Socotra and (surprise!) Socotra.
Continue reading The Island of SocotraA brand new book gracing the shelves at Stanfords is Philip Parker’s History of World Trade in Maps. In this beautiful book, more than 70 maps give a visual representation of the history of World Commerce, accompanied by text which tells the extraordinary story of the merchants, adventurers, middle-men and monarchs who bought, sold, explored and fought in search of profit and power. The maps are all works of art, witnesses to history, and have a fascinating story to tell.
To celebrate the launch of his new book, we asked Philip to write this blog post to give us all a taster of what we can expect:
In an age when trade negotiations – or the lack of them – seem to degenerate into political point-scoring or abstruse technical arguments over the cocoa content of chocolate – it is easy to forget that without trade, our way of life would collapse. Every country, even North Korea, has to trade the goods it can produce in exchange for those it needs but cannot produce. A trading advantage can be gained by a reputation for quality, specialization, sharp-tongued merchants or skill in spotting shortages. Above all, however, diplomacy acts as a multiplier of trading success.
Continue reading History of World Trade in Maps, Trade and DiplomacyWe are excited to bring you a little taster of the brilliant new book Power & the People by Alev Scott and Andronike Makres ahead of publication on 14th November and welcoming them both to Stanfords London for an evening of discussion on Wednesday 13th November at 7:00pm.
Helping us understand present political issues by exploring the past, this is not to be missed!
Continue reading Power & the People
